Coming Home to Vim

http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/

by stevelosh • 16 years ago

285 120 16 years ago

samdk2• 16 years ago

One of the things I love about Vim is that every time I read though a post like this or look at someone's .vimrc I learn something new about what it can do or get another insight about how its features can make my life easier.

My (semi-commented) .vimrc is on GitHub if anyone wants another example: http://github.com/samdk/vimconf/blob/master/dotvimrc

I've also found StackOverflow's list of most-voted questions tagged vim to be a very useful source of little tidbits: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vim?sort=votes&...

And there've been several HN .vimrc posts that I also found very useful. This is one of the best: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856051

This is another excellently commented and extensive .vimrc that (I think) is mentioned in one of the above links, but deserves its own specific mention here: http://www.vi-improved.org/vimrc.php

And this is another I found completely by accident a while ago that includes some excellent examples of vimscript macros: http://fingelrest.silent-blade.org/uploads/Main/vimrc.html

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Exactly.

Case in point: I just found out about ending the backupdir with two slashes to include the full path in the filename by reading your .vimrc. Thanks!

sigzero3• 16 years ago

syntax on

filetype on

filetype plugin on

filetype indent on

You do not want "filetype off"

Also, check out snipMate as it gives you easy to use TextMate type snippets.

In Vim:

:h filetype

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Replying to myself because I can't seem to reply to sigzero:

Yeah, I definitely need to get around to reading :h filetype.

I mentioned Snipmate in the article, so I know about it :)

mrud3• 16 years ago

Another good vimrc is the vimrc from grml http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-etc-core.git;a=blob_plain;f=etc/...

It is a good start to a simple but yet powerful vim configuration, especially integration with screen, pastetoggle, etc.

Seth_Kriticos2• 16 years ago

Nice, I got a feeling what your main line of programming is from the source. That's somehow fun.

Anyway, might as well join in too, here is my vimrc: http://gist.github.com/144742#file_gistfile1.vim

lelele• 16 years ago

That's exactly what I hate about both Emacs and Vim: yes, they are customizable, however many useful customization are scattered around user scripts.

EDIT: A flag here and there does not make a structured environment. That's why many people are running to other editors: they find that what they are more likely to need is already there in a designed way, not in a thrown-together one.

adorton• 16 years ago

This is an excellent vim tutorial. Unlike others I've read, it makes me want to be vim power user by clearly spelling out the benefits of various tricks and commands.

ollysb2• 16 years ago

Entirely agree on the aesthetics, one of the things holding me back from switching is that I love vibrant ink in textmate. I just can't seem to find a theme that is quite as bright (vividchalk was pretty close). Any suggestions?

davidmathers• 16 years ago

Convert your textmate theme to vim: http://coloration.sickill.net/

ollysb2• 16 years ago

Thanks! macvim here I come :)

edit: Many of the most popular textmate schemes have already been converted and can be found at http://github.com/squil/vim_colors

kevincolyar4• 16 years ago

If you're a vim user on a mac, try ViKing. It lets you use vi-like navigation throughout OSX. It's still in beta and I would love some feedback.

http://vikingapp.com @vikingapp

SkyMarshal• 16 years ago

This is what I love most about Vim, it's becoming a universal, mouseless interface to just about everything you use a computer for, except maybe games.

So far there's a Vim plugin or mod for: Emacs, Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, Opera, Eclipse, and now even OS X. What others are there?

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

I've given you feedback before, but will repost it here for other HN readers.

The main reason I don't use ViKing is that the hotkeys all end up shadowing something useful or being very awkward.

If I choose Ctrl I shadow Ctrl+H.

If I choose Cmd I shadow lots of stuff, like Cmd+L in a browser.

If I choose Alt (ViKing doesn't do that right now, but I'll assume it could be added) it's quite awkward (unless I remap capslock to Alt, but I've already got capslock-as-Ctrl in my fingers).

I don't have a solution to this, but would desperately love to find one.

kevincolyar4• 16 years ago

Sorry I haven't fixed this yet. I've been swamped with other projects.

I was thinking about it tonight... what do you think of some kind of double-tap combo that would enable/disable ViKing functionality, like ctrl-ctrl?

steve19• 16 years ago

The kevincolyar account does nothing but spam HN with links to his application. I am sick of seeing him post spam each time a VIM article hits the homepage.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

I'm the author and submitter of the post and for what it's worth I don't mind his comment at all.

It's relevant because OS X Vim users would probably like to use Vim movement everywhere. I know I would.

It's certainly more relevant than the "use emacs lol" comments that inevitably show up.

kevincolyar4• 16 years ago

I'm just trying to get what I think is a useful application into the hands of the people who would find it useful. If you find that irritating, just keep scrolling by.

wccrawford• 16 years ago

I disagree with everything that he starts with 'I almost never do X so I...'

But other than that, I think this is a great list of addons and I already use a few of them myself.

njharman5• 16 years ago

yeah i rely on replacing first pattern all the time!

grayrest• 16 years ago

Couple tricks:

    " this splits a netrw window in the directory of the current file, :Vexplore for vsplit.
    nnoremap - :Sexplore<CR>

    " I use surround.vim all the time. The default mapping for s is terrible.
    nmap s ysi
    nmap S ysa

kaffiene• 16 years ago

I feel the same way about Emacs. I use IDEs for specific development tasks (I don't generally code Java in Emacs, for example, since Netbeans, Eclipse, Idea are all much better in that context) but where content is all over the place as it often is with net development, I use Emacs.

mhansen• 16 years ago

For a free, cross-platform (and excellent) alternative to PeepOpen, try Command-T

I used to use FuzzyFinder_TextMate, but that's stopped development, and the creator recommends you use Command-T instead.

https://wincent.com/products/command-t

pyre• 16 years ago

LustyExplorer is good. One feature that I really like is that I can start exploring from the current directory or the directory of the current file. This way I can keep vim's current directory at the root of my source tree, and not have to deal with turning on 'acd' and all of the incompatibilities that can arise.

cosmok• 16 years ago

+1 for LustyExplorer. Use that every day at work and at home.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

I've added a link to this to the post, thanks!

swannodette• 16 years ago

On a side note, the Gundo feature (http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/#gundo) is available for Emacs (http://briancarper.net/blog/568/emacs-undo-trees).

boskone• 16 years ago

Don't lose another four years before blogging about how you finally switched to emacs from vim and bite the bullet now. Emacs is to vim as vim is to textmate IF you are a hard core software developer. Vim is best for sysadmins, simple, quick non-complex editing.

I know, I know... But when you were newly in "love" with textmate I'm sure if I said you need to switch to vim you'd say no way. Skip vim and go right to the best there is, Emacs.

swah• 16 years ago

Agreed, but is it painful. (And yes, I swapped Control with Caps on day one)

silentbicycle2• 16 years ago

...and once your fingers are raw, bloody stumps from typing with three modifier keys held down, then you can write about coming home to vim again! Bonus!

Seriously, can we not start yet another Emacs vs. vi argument? Neither is perfect, they both have ardent fans, pick either, get really proficient with it, and don't look back.

(Emacs user who loves Emacs's extensibility and multi-buffer design but prefers vi's modal keyboard ui. And yes, I know about viper, etc.)

oddthink• 16 years ago

Have you noticed that all of the recent press seems to be for vim? It seems like every month there's a new "I switched to vim!" post, but never a similar emacs version, or even a mention of emacs in the switch article.

Note: I am not attempting to argue emacs vs. vim.

jjcm• 16 years ago

From the HN Guidelines: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

You have nothing new here, nor do you have any evidence to back up your claim that emacs is superior to vim for development purposes. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with you here - I don't have the authority to as I don't have enough experience with Emacs to make that call. Emacs is a great piece of software, and I think that we can all agree upon that here even if we aren't a user of it (such as myself), but that doesn't mean we can make un-cited statements about it.

picklestime• 16 years ago

Interesting article. I found it a bit strange that he didn't link to or reference this: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/10/10/coming-home-to-vim

which shares the exact same title.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Yeah, I didn't realize that post had the same title, even though I read it and it's a fantastic post.

I'll add a link to it now.

astrofinch9• 16 years ago

After a few months of vim use, I did part of the vim tutorial using both vim and a click-and-type editor (gedit) and timed myself. Gedit was significantly faster. Can't say I understand you vim fanatics.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

If you say why Gedit was faster perhaps us vim fanatics can help you understand us.

astrofinch9• 16 years ago

Let's say I need to change a word. With Gedit, I double-click the word and retype it the right way. With Vim, I press j until I'm on the line where the word is, then I press w until I'm at the beginning of the word, then I press cw to change the word, retype it the right way, and press escape to go back to command mode.

Triple-clicking in Gedit highlights a line. Triple-clicking and dragging highlights a contiguous group of lines. In Vim, I'd need to move to the line I want to begin my selection on ([number]G or jjj), then press V, then press jjj until everything is selected. And I don't have to deal with the fact that the default way of deleting things overwrites the default clipboard either.

I do use Vim when I need to process lines in a text document (with macros), when I'm editing files on a server, or when I'm writing a git commit message. I suppose I could use Vim in much the same way as Gedit through its mouse capability, but I dislike the lack of interface between my system clipboard and Vim's, and the fact that when I paste code in to a Vim document, the indentation gets all screwed up.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

Apple discovered fairly early on that while using a keyboard shortcut seems faster, using the mouse is almost always quicker, even for very advanced users. The illusion stems from how we perceive time when performing the different tasks - we remember time spent searching for the correct target to click, but we forget time spent remembering the right incantation.

This paradox is one of the big reasons why I don't use Vi or EMACS - I think that the productivity gains are nowhere near as great as users make out, but the sense of mastery over such arcane tools is inherently satisfying to the kind of person that spends a lot of time in a text editor.

http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

kemiller2• 16 years ago

Few months of vim use is not really enough to see major benefits in raw speed. You have to get not just the basics but the advanced movement/replacement commands in your bones. A click-and-type editor will start you off fast and top out quickly.

You can also use vim as if it were TextEdit, mostly, and the gradually add the advanced features, as per wycats. Best of both worlds.

Seth_Kriticos2• 16 years ago

I don't know how you are working and what your typing characteristics are, but you are probably not doing a lot of fast typing.

Once you type reasonably fast (>30wpm), the time you have to invest to reach for the mouse, do some funky things and home back in to the keyboard is quite significant.

Another thing is, that once you got some of the very useful commands into your bone, like repeat action, some of the more elaborate selections, replacing and so on, you really get much more efficient with vim.

There are other advantages too. Pulling gedit through and ssh session is at best problematic, most cases there won't be an X client on the other side. You (almost) always find some kind of vi/vim there though.

There are all those nice things you can do that are really use case specific, like live editing files through ftp, scripting various things that you regularly do, adapting the config file, etc..

But it's not a question of "months". Really, vim has a very steep learning curve and you have to use it on a regular basis so it gets entrenched in you. Think more about "years". But that's cool, there is always more to learn, tweak and optimize.

astrofinch9• 16 years ago

typeracer.com says I type around 80 wpm, and I get quite nervous when I'm taking any sort of typing test, so I suspect my real typing speed is much higher. I'm on a laptop. Reaching for my mouse is very natural.

I do generally use vim for editing over ssh, although since I am root on the machines I work with, I would configure Gedit to work over ssh if I did any serious remote editing.

nagnatron2• 16 years ago

I was getting a bit tired of seeing/reading a blog post by a random convert to vim/emacs every week but this one is very good.

julianz2• 16 years ago

Great read. Among other things it made me dig deep into the heart of my Vista machine and find whatever font was making your site (and others) utterly unreadable. The answer is shitty Palatino fonts installed by HP, presumably as part of a printer driver.

So there you go, if Steve's site makes your eyes bleed then go and kill the HP Palatino fonts on your machine.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Hmm, perhaps I should change the font stack.

Is your shitty HP font named "Palatino" or "Palatino Linotype"?

If it's "Palatino" I'll need to insert a Windows-only font at the front of the list.

If it's "Palatino Linotype" I'll need to insert a Windows-only font as the second element in the list.

julianz2• 16 years ago

Hi Steve - it's "Palatino". I also have "Palatino Linotype" and it looks fine now that I've knocked off Palatino.

It's a problem I've come across previously on Windows, I think Sun's Java was also installing some horrible version of Palatino a while back. Pity, as it's a wonderful typeface and looks nice on your site.

tommynazareth• 16 years ago

TextMate doesn't have split windows?!

compay• 16 years ago

Nope. It's one of the biggest complaints about Textmate, and one of the things that led me to (mostly) switch to vim.

A lot of people are pretty upset with the author because rather than choosing to release an incremental update that adds smaller features like this, he decided on a total rewrite and got bogged down with no release in sight.

That said, Textmate still feels remarkably current despite the fact that its last major update was more than 4 years ago.

ptn• 16 years ago

A little off-topic: I love how in the side panel of the page the sub-title fades in and out as you scroll.

cracki• 16 years ago

that's proportional to how much of the actual headline is still visible. scroll slowly and you'll notice.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Here's a bit more about them: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/making-my-site-sing/#showi...

CGamesPlay• 16 years ago

>Some people use a mapping that turns search highlighting off and on, but I don’t like that solution. It means I have to remember to turn it back on later once I’ve probably already forgotten about the original search.

:nohlsearch removes highlighting, doesn't modify search history, and also doesn't disable highlighted search. It will still highlight matches for the next search.

  > nnoremap <leader>S ?{<CR>jV/^\s*\}?$<CR>k:sort<CR>:let @/=''<CR>

I'm curious why not just use `ViB:sort`?

> When I press return, create a new line at the same indentation level as the current one. Don’t try to be clever and adjust the indent of new line in any fashion.

  set autoindent nosmartindent nocindent

Wrap it in a filetype line if you like.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

> I'm curious why not just use `ViB:sort`?

Because we use LessCSS[1] which lets you nest selectors:

    body {
        color: #151515;
        background-color: white;
        
        a {
            color: red;
        }
    }

When I sort the "body" properties I don't want it to break up the stuff nested under it.

I'll give the indent settings a try, thanks!

[1] http://lesscss.org/

sunny36• 16 years ago

A litte off topic. Much that I like vim I haven't found any plugin than can indent Javascript properly. To be honest whenever I write Javascript I just open up emacs. Is there something close to js-mode in vim?

sharkbrainguy• 16 years ago

(ITYM js2-mode) No.

I use this to indent my JS: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1936

You could use JSLint plugin to get more of the features, but I've never gotten it to feel like js2-mode.

njharman5• 16 years ago

I dont see the appeal of nerdtree and the like. For me they are clumsy and too much information.

I'm very adept at unix cmd line, find, ack, locate, CDPATH, cmd history, and friends. I spend 10-20% of my editing time at the bash prompt. So much so i aliased :e to vim

Having never got the "gui" file managemnet tools i cant say for certain but i wonder if power and productivity gains one sees from truly learning vim can be reproduced by truly learning cmd line.

lenni2• 16 years ago

Could you please share how exactly you do the "jump to file foo.bar" functionality? That is the only part of vim I still find a bit laborious, probably because I haven't found a good workflow for it.

jb55• 16 years ago

:b has smart tab completion. You can type any part of the filename and you can tab through the results. This is generally what I find myself doing when I have a lot of buffers open. Otherwise I just use minibufexpl with buffer next/prev keybinds.

njharman5• 16 years ago

:e f<tab>.b<tab><return> or similar from command line often using history. After using a code base for a few hours/days I pretty much know where everything is and exactly how many chars I need to type before tab autocompletes.

After I open a file once it is in my vim and or bash history which means opening it again is only a couple keystrokes.

I use <ctrl>6 and multiple (3-4) non-overlapping terminals (with text mode vim) in various directories. So "jump to file foo.bar" is often look at the vim/terminal to the upper right or <ctrl>6 or :e<space>f<up><enter>

Don't remember what this does excactly but it's in my vimrc and might have something to do with it.

"freakin awesome file completion set wildmode=list:longest

I also use this form of "history"

bind '"\e[A"':history-search-backward bind '"\e[B"':history-search-forward

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

PeepOpen or Command-T.

merijnv2• 16 years ago

What annoys me about a lot of tech blog posts like this one is that they're essentially voodoo. People like the author write instructions about what you should do without even understanding the instructions themselves.

    "I’m not entirely sure what the filetype lines do. I’ve read that they’re necessary and so far I haven’t had problems."

His example .vimrc has filetype listed twice, which is redundant. This in itself isn't a big deal, but the problem these lines illustrate is.

Sentences like these are the reason for billions of blog posts about setting up an OpenSSL certificate authority all repeating the same example which the documentation explicitly mentions is the wrong way of doing things.

In fact I find that these voodoo instructions often crowd out any actual proper tech guides in the search results, all for the sake of drawing traffic to some blog...

Don't write tech guides if you can't be bothered to do the research and explain to your readers why they should do what you do and what exactly they're doing!

loewenskind• 16 years ago

I wish this post were closer to the top. Now that knowledge can finally become instantly available, it's biggest enemy is large amounts of misinformation. This is a much more effective strategy than censorship.

andymorris• 16 years ago

I'm not a vim guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I still don't take what he says at face value. I don't trust ANYTHING I see on the internet just because it's there!

Your criticism seems to be due to the belief that, in a world where the only information on the internet could be treated as gospel, that would allow the experts opinion to come through easily. Unfortunately, that sets up the circumstance where the experts get granted much more exposure and trust than they necessarily deserve, and it inevitably gets subverted and abused.

I personally prefer the current system - treat all information as suspect until you can verify it. It leaves MUCH less room for exploitation than all of our other "trust by default" mediums.

-- Ayjay on Fedang

merijnv2• 16 years ago

Oh, I agree that not trusting information on the internet is the sensible default. However, there are plenty of people who will be copying his examples directly without any investigation.

Some will probably post the exact same stuff on their own blogs or link to this post. Before you know it this example will drown out any serious search results for "vim filetype", effectively stopping new people from learning how to do things properly.

Now obviously this post is a bit hyperbole in this instance. But these things do happen because people can't be arsed to treat the things they write/publish with the care it deserves.

graywh2• 16 years ago

I see a lot of people in #vim (freenode) who have followed some random blog post instructions for configuring vim that we have to correct.

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Actually I remember why I do this now. It's to make Pathogen work.

From Pathogen's docs:

    Note that you need to invoke the pathogen functions before
    invoking "filetype plugin indent on" if you want it to load
    ftdetect files. On Debian (and probably other distros), the
    system vimrc does this early on, so you actually need to
    "filetype off" before "filetype plugin indent on" to force
    reloading.

So yeah, it's not voodoo, it's not redundant, it has a purpose that I just couldn't remember off the top of my head. I'm not sure how the calls to Pathogen got moved out from between those line -- probably when I was rearranging my vimrc at some point.

barfoomoo2• 16 years ago

A bit off the topic but a couple of doubts regarding pathogen. I installed pathogen and am a bit confused regarding the organisation of the plugins within pathogen. Say I have plugin called foo.vim, inside the bundles folder do I directly drop it or do I create a folder called foo and then drop foo.vim within it? Also say a plugin has syntax files and an ftplugin folder then do I just drop the plugin in pathogen and it is supposed to work? Is there any good doc out there explaining how to configure with pathogen?

mattikus• 16 years ago

"Say I have plugin called foo.vim, inside the bundles folder do I directly drop it or do I create a folder called foo and then drop foo.vim within it?

You need to create the folder foo with a folder called plugin and then foo.vim inside it -> foo/plugin/foo.vim

" Also say a plugin has syntax files and an ftplugin folder then do I just drop the plugin in pathogen and it is supposed to work?

Yep. Normally vim plugins are shipped in zip files that contain the structure and are meant to be installed on top of your .vim directory. All you do is instead install them into .bundles/pluginName instead. Also, since a lot of vim plugins are kept in source control anyways, a lot on github, you can simply use git submodules to version your plugins as well making updating them a cinch.

barfoomoo2• 16 years ago

Thank you.

SpookyET• 16 years ago

I am quite proud of my vimrc. It took me a while to build it. By default, it's just a text editor without settings required for development. Use dev to enable devmode and nodev to go back to normal text editing mode.

http://github.com/SpookyET/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc

dschobel• 16 years ago

I have nothing constructive to add beyond-- thank you Steve, what a fantastically informative post. It clearly took a lot of time and effort to put together and it is very much appreciated.

sabalaba• 16 years ago

If anybody is curious, or just wanted to steal his .vimrc (like myself), here it is [I'm surprised he didn't provide it at the end of the article...]

http://paste.pocoo.org/show/265338/

stevelosh17• 16 years ago

Here's the BitBucket link, which will stay current as I push more updates in the future: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/dotfiles/src/tip/vim/.vimrc

I did link it in the "Important .vimrc Lines" section, but perhaps I should add it at the bottom as well.

irahul• 16 years ago

Since the blog isn't taking comments, posting it here.

> doesn't work very well with is Python, because it preserves whitespace when it moves the code over the REPL.

If that's the only issue, it's easy to fix it. All you need to do is to replace multiple new lines with single new line.

    let s:foo_text = substitute(a:text, '\n\s*\n\+', '\n', 'g') . "\n"

Here is my slightly modified slime.vim: http://gist.github.com/589934

I have been using it on Ubuntu with vim and IPython and it seems to work fine. When I started using slime.vim for Python, I ran into whitespace issue and Jonathan(slime.vim developer) resolved it when I asked him on his blog. http://technotales.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/like-slime-for-v...

You can search for Rahul in the comments.

njharman5• 16 years ago

  "Many people like to remove any extra whitespace from the
  " ends of lines. Here is one way to do it automatically
  " when saving file.
  fun! <SID>StripTrailingWhitespaces()
    let l = line(".")
    let c = col(".")
    %s/\s\+$//e
    call cursor(l, c)
  endfun
  autocmd BufWritePre * :call <SID>StripTrailingWhitespaces()

  " When editing a file, always jump to the last known cursor position.
  au BufReadPost * if line("'\"") > 0 && line("'\"") <= line("$") | exe "normal g'\"" | endif

  " This function determines, wether we are on the start of the line text (then tab indents)
  " or if we want to try autocompletion
  function InsertTabWrapper()
    let col = col('.') - 1
    if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'
        return "\<tab>"
    else
        return "\<c-p>"
    endif
  endfunction
  " Remap the tab key to select action with InsertTabWrapper
  inoremap <tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper()<cr>

BoppreH• 16 years ago

I can't get snipMate to work. Downloaded a brand-new gVim (windows 64, btw) dropped a pathogen.vim file straight from github into my vimfiles/autoload folder and copied the snipMate's files to vimfiles/bundle/snipMate.vim

I'm using the article's _vimrc.

:scriptnames lists the "plugin/snipMate.vim" files from both the "snipmate.vim/" and "snipmate.vim/after"

But when I type some snippet (like a "for" in a *.c file) and press tab, a single space (not a tab) is inserted. Pressing tabs on non-snippets inserts a tab like expected.

Am I missing something here?

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